Death Traps (1960)
Reviewed by: Stephe on 2011-01-27
Death Traps is a noir about a woman who in a fit of drunken
jealous pique, puts out a contract on anyone who her erstwhile
beau marries, only to wind up marrying him herself and hence being
the designee of the contract. Tin Ching plays a crooked smoothie,
but one not as harsh as the backstabber he played in Boxer from
Shantung. It has been claimed that Chang Cheh wrote the script,
but he actually only did re-writes (script-doctoring), perhaps as
a favor to star Li Mei, who he had worked with on The Cruel Heart
of My Man in 1956 and Wildfire in 1957. Chang Cheh thought the
script ultimately a failure, but I found the film to be rather
good. It is certainly involving. I thought that Helen Li Mei as
the woman and Roy Chiao as her beau were well suited to the genre,
and I would like to see them again in a noir vein if such films
were to be made available on disc.
Reviewer Score: 7